Hell Town. William W. Johnstone

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СКАЧАТЬ to keep up with everyone else’s activities. From everything I’ve heard, Hamish Munro has high hopes for this—”

      Before Claiborne could go on, Frank shouted, “Get down!” He had seen a telltale glint of sunlight on metal just inside at one of the windows in the old mill building.

      Claiborne just looked confused and wasn’t budging, so Frank kicked his feet from the stirrups, leaped from the saddle, and landed in the buggy. He grabbed Claiborne and dived out the other side of the vehicle, dragging the startled engineer with him.

      If that reflection he had seen didn’t mean anything, Frank was going to feel mighty silly when they hit the ground.

      As they sprawled on the rocky earth, however, a rifle cracked and sent a bullet whistling through the space where Claiborne had been a few seconds earlier. Frank’s instincts had been right again—there was a bushwhacker lurking in the old stamp mill.

      But as more shots slammed out and slugs began to kick up dust around them, Frank figured this was one time when it might have been better to be wrong!

      Chapter 8

      Frank surged to his feet with one hand hooked in Claiborne’s collar. He hauled the smaller man upright and hustled him around to the rear of the buggy. The vehicle wouldn’t provide much cover, but it was better than nothing. As they ran, Frank heard the wind-rip of another bullet close beside his ear. It was a sound he had heard all too many times in his eventful life.

      They ducked behind the buggy as another shot ricocheted off some of the brass trim on it. The horse hitched to the front of the buggy snorted in fear and moved around skittishly. If the horse bolted, they would be left out in the open, exposed to the bushwhacker’s fire.

      “My God!” Claiborne exclaimed in a shaken voice. “Why are they shooting at us?”

      “Your guess is as good as mine,” Frank said. He drew his Colt as he crouched there. The range was a little far for a handgun, but his Winchester was in the saddle boot strapped to Goldy. The gelding had trotted off a few yards and then stopped. Frank could have tried to whistle him over, but since Goldy seemed to be out of the line of fire, Frank wanted him to stay there.

      As the shots paused for a moment, probably so the bushwhacker could reload, Frank shouted, “Hey, you in the mill! Hold your fire, blast it! We don’t mean you any harm!”

      The only reply was a resumption of the shooting. Bullets tore through the canvas canopy over the buggy’s seat.

      Frank glanced over at the big cur and snapped, “Dog! Go get him!”

      Dog took off running toward the mill. His powerful muscles bunched under his shaggy hide as he raced over the ground. Bullets plowed into the dirt around him, but he darted from side to side so that, as fast as he was moving, he was an almost impossible target to hit.

      Dog disappeared around the back of the mill. His instincts and animal cunning told him to come at the bushwhacker from the rear.

      Frank just hoped the rifleman was the only one in the old mill; otherwise Dog might be in for a hot lead welcome.

      Sure enough, a moment later he heard shots from inside the building. With a grimace, he told Claiborne, “Stay here and keep your head down!”

      Then he burst out from behind the buggy and sprinted toward the mill, weaving in his approach as Dog had done.

      Riding boots weren’t made for running, but Frank managed to get up some pretty good speed as he ran toward the mill. No more shots were coming in his direction. If nothing else, Dog had provided a good distraction for the would-be killer.

      Frank hoped that wasn’t going to cost his shaggy trail partner his life, though.

      When he got close to the door, he lifted his foot and slammed his boot heel into the wood just below the knob. The door crashed open. Frank went through it in a crouch, the Colt up and ready. His keen eyes took in the scene instantly. Four men were in the room, which at one time must have been an office. One of the men was down on the floor, rolling around trying to keep a snarling, snapping Dog from ripping his throat out. The other men held guns, but couldn’t fire at the big cur for fear of hitting their friend instead.

      Frank’s noisy entrance drew the attention of the others away from the struggle between man and dog on the floor. One of them yelled, “Look out, Gunther!”

      A tall, burly man holding a rifle swung toward Frank, but found himself staring down the barrel of The Drifter’s Peacemaker. That was the last sight a great many men had seen in their lives.

      This time, instead of shooting, Frank gave the man in front of his gun a chance to surrender. “Drop it,” he said. “Now!”

      The man called Gunther was bald except for a pair of dark, bushy eyebrows. He scowled in anger, but with Frank’s gun on him, he had no choice but to bend and place the rifle on the floor at his feet.

      “Slide it over here,” Frank ordered. “You other men, I want your guns too.”

      “Somebody help me!” the man wrestling with Dog screamed. He was already gashed and bloody, his shirt in ribbons from the big cur’s sharp, rending teeth.

      “Dog!” Frank snapped. Instantly, Dog backed off, still growling as his hackles stood up menacingly.

      The other men had pistols in their hands. Since the bushwhacker’s shots had come from a rifle, Frank had no doubt that Gunther had been the one firing them. As Frank gave them a cold, level stare, the men put their guns on the floor and kicked them across the room.

      “You’re gonna be damn sorry about this, mister,” Gunther blustered. “Threatenin’ us and siccin’ that damn wolf on us…we’ll have the law on you!”

      “He’s a dog, not a wolf,” Frank said, “and I am the law. Besides, you were the one who came close to killing me and my friend, remember?”

      Gunther didn’t back down. He said, “I had a right to shoot at you! You’re on private property, mister.”

      “That’s Marshal to you.”

      Gunther sneered. “Marshal o’ Buckskin?”

      “That’s right.”

      “You got no authority out here. Your jurisdiction ends at the edge of the settlement.”

      Technically, he was right. But as the only star-packer in this area, Frank figured that as a practical matter, his authority extended a little farther than Buckskin itself.

      The man Dog had savaged was helped to his feet by his friends. His injuries looked worse than they really were, Frank knew.

      “That…that varmint’s loco!” the man said as he pointed a shaking hand at Dog. “Came at me like a hydrophobia skunk!” He let out a groan of dismay. “Is he mad, mister? Am I gonna start foamin’ at the mouth from them bites?”

      “I’m more worried about Dog coming down with something,” Frank said. “Who are you men?”

      Gunther thumped his chest with a malletlike fist. “We work for Hamish Munro…and in case you don’t know, mister, Hamish Munro is СКАЧАТЬ