Read Online .45-Caliber Desperado by Peter Brandvold - Free Book Online Page A

half cock.
    He stared through the tangle of shrubs and cedars and past a falling-down privy toward the back of the three-story roadhouse that looked so sun-blistered and rickety that the next strong breeze would likely obliterate it and muttered, “There’s three of ’em, and I’ve been after them rancid polecats’ hides for nigh on two months now. Let’s not muck this up, shall we, Sheriff?”
    To his left, Sheriff Dusty Mason out of Willow City, Wyoming Territory, slid his own, much newer rifle from his saddle boot and gave the older Spurr, who was pushing sixty though he himself was not sure of his own age, a condescending look. “You should have had him in Wheaton.”
    Spurr felt anger surge up from deep in his loins. Making it all the hotter was the humiliation that came with it. Indeed, he should have taken down Wes Leggett, Christopher Fancy, and Marvin “the Maiden Killer” Candles back in Mason’s county in Wyoming Territory.
    Three things had gotten in Spurr’s way—a bad ticker, a comely, big-bosomed whore half his age, and one of his notorious benders. Leggett, Fancy, and Candles had indeed been holed up just outside of town, at a little outlaw ranch owned by an Irishman and stage relay station manager, Burton P. Murphy, while Fancy had been sparking the Irishman’s blond daughter, Lucy.
    Spurr hadn’t known that at the time, however. He’d thought they’d ridden on to Deadwood. But he’d been fairly deep in his cups by then, and he hadn’t bothered to check the authenticity of his information.
    So here he was now, riding with the tinhorn county sheriff whose father he was damn near old enough to be and whom he’d been ordered to ride with by Chief Marshal Henry Brackett in Denver as a sort of punishment for his misstep in Wheaton, and having to take load after load of subtle and not-so-subtle shit from the arrogant bastard who obviously thought Spurr had ridden roughshod after owl-hoots way longer than he should have.
    Spurr didn’t like the man’s mustache or the liquid cobalt-blueness of his eyes. He also didn’t like the fact that Mason was a Texan. Spurr didn’t like Texans for too many reasons to go into, but the main one being that they thought they owned the whole fuckin’ frontier—cow, wagon, six-gun, and doxie . . .
    â€œYou ever make a mistake, Dusty?” Spurr asked the county sheriff now. “Ah, never mind. You think on it hard. Chew your mustache over it and get back to me later. For now, let’s go get them three fork-tailed critters and haul ’em back to Cheyenne for hangin’.”
    â€œI’m for that.”
    Mason swung easily out of his saddle, hiking his right leg up high with a flourish, even making his spur rowel trill as it cut the air. Spurr glowered at the tall, rangy lawman, almost twenty years Spurr’s junior, setting himself lightly on the ground beside his tall strawberry. He often thought the man tried to look healthier, faster, and lighter on his feet for the sole purpose of getting Spurr’s goat, which he’d gotten over two weeks ago now, even before they’d picked up the trail of the three killers in southern Dakota.
    Spurr looped the reins of his big roan, Cochise, over a chokecherry branch. The back windows of the roadhouse had flour-sack curtains drawn over them. When gold and silver was still being hauled out of the nearby hills, the place had done double and triple time as a mercantile and brothel. Spurr had done some skirt chasing here himself not all that long ago.
    He remembered that the whores here had taken pride in the place and had even planted flowers around it. Now, however, the placed seemed nearly as rickety as the outhouse that flanked it, and there was nothing left of the flowers but wiry bits of brush nearly sunken into the ground.
    â€œWell, I reckon you’re in charge since you’re federal,” Mason