Read Online .45-Caliber Deathtrap by Peter Brandvold - Free Book Online

the fire and through the trees toward the yard, the damp grass and sage crackling softly beneath his tread. As he walked past the livery barn, he stopped and turned to Serenity Parker standing outside his saloon, the sashed window dimly lit on either side of him. Smoke wafted from the saloon’s tin chimney pipe, smelling like eggs, pork, and coffee.
    â€œBreakfast?” Parker said quietly.
    Cuno shook his head. “No time.”
    â€œBeware of Long Draw,” Parker warned. “Bad place these days. Road agents and such.”
    Cuno nodded and continued to the brothel’s overgrown yard, mounted the steps, and pushed inside. The cloying smell of whiskey and tobacco smoke followed him through the dark, quiet parlor, where one girl slept on a fainting couch, and up the stairs, the carpeted planks creaking beneath his boots. From somewhere came a man’s low voice and a girl’s quiet laughter. One of the customers already up, charming one of the girls.
    The hall was dark, but Cuno saw Lara’s bedroom door standing ajar on the other side of the cuckoo clock. Inside the small room, he crouched with the girl in his arms, pulled the sheet and blankets back, and gentled her onto the bed.
    She sighed and pressed her cheek to the pillow, rolling onto her side, facing Cuno, and bringing her knees toward her chest. As he raised the blankets, he saw her toes flex and curl.
    â€œAre you going?” she whispered.
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œDon’t go. Stay here with me.”
    He kissed her cheek, pressed his forehead to hers. He stayed there for a moment, taking a deep breath, smelling the warm, peach smell of the girl. He’d like to remember it for later, when things got ugly again. You needed something like the smell of a woman, or the image of a sun-dappled creek with mayflies hatching, to maintain sanity when the shit started flying.
    So that you remembered there were other things in life besides death and killing.
    He kissed her once more, squeezed her shoulder, and moved to the door. He stopped, plucked a piece of silver from his front pocket, began to set it on the dresser, and stopped. He turned back to Lara breathing softly under the blankets, the window behind her turning pale.
    He returned the silver to his pocket, went out, and quietly closed the door.

7
    CUNO LET HIMSELF out of Miss Mundy’s and headed for the livery barn. It was still dark, but the horses and mules were scuffling around the corral, knowing it was getting close to chow time. Cuno walked around behind the barn, retrieved his camping gear from the creek, then walked back to the barn. He was opening the small front door when he turned toward Serenity Parker’s saloon and paused.
    The windows were dark. A CLOSED sign hung in the right front window. The old man must’ve decided to take the day off and go fishing.
    Cuno continued into the barn, tossed his gear into the wagon box, behind the driver’s seat, then went out to fetch his mules. A half hour later, he was moving along the gently sloping wagon road west of Columbine, watching his shadow angling out ahead of him along the rocky ground, the copper sun rising from the sage of the eastern flats behind him. On his left, Columbine Creek gurgled in its steep cut, sheathed in willows and aspens, pines and cedars studding the canyon’s boulder-strewn walls rising to either side of the lumbering wagon.
    Around ten, the sun heated up, reflecting off the canyon walls, and Cuno slipped out of his denim jacket, tossed it into the box behind him. He was about to reach into his grub sack for some biscuits when a shadow flicked in the corner of his right eye, up high on a towering scarp. A rifle barked, the shot plunking into the seat a foot from Cuno’s right thigh.
    The mule spooked to the right of the trail, and the wagon’s right front wheel slammed between two low boulders, giving a wooden crunch. The mule brayed as another rifle shot spanged off one