Read Online Gambling Man by Clifton Adams - Free Book Online

voice had a curious twang to it, like a fiddle string about to snap. “Fight him with your fists. I know you're not afraid of him.. He's mostly blubber and you can whip him easy.”
    “I don't want to whip him with my fists,” Jeff said grimly. He started walking again, and this time Todd stood where he was, letting Jeff go on alone.
    Well, to hell with him! Jeff told himself. I don't need Todd Wintworth or anybody else!
    Today he did not take the street that went past Jed Harper's bank building, because he knew his pa would be waiting there for him. He cut up the wide alley behind Baxter's store, circled in front of the public corral and headed toward the Sewell house. He was careful not to go past the tin shop and not to let Aunt Beulah see him when he got home.
    When he was sure that nobody was watching, Jeff headed for the cowshed where Nathan had hung his saddlebags from a rafter. He knew that his pa kept an extra .45 and several boxes of cartridges in one of the bags.
    Sure enough, when he got the leather pouches down he found a heavy Colt's Cavalry carefully wrapped in oiled rags. He loaded it with five rounds from the ammunition carton, easing the hammer down on the empty chamber. He carefully wiped the oil from the revolver and then hid it away inside his shirt.
    He felt his heart hammering with excitement, but he was not nervous or scared. His hands were perfectly steady. He peered around the shed wall to make sure Aunt Beulah hadn't seen him, and then he darted around the front of the house and headed toward Harkey's pasture. If anybody wanted to know, he was just heading to the pasture to fetch Bessie.
    But nobody wanted to know.
    When he reached the barbed-wire gate, he turned north and followed the fence toward Crowder's Creek. When he was sure no one could see him, he took out the revolver and tried to hold it the way his pa did.
    His hands were large for a boy of thirteen, but not large enough to handle a gun as big and heavy as a Colt's .45. He could cock it with his thumb, but it was a strain and took some time. It would be better, he decided, to cock with the left hand and trigger with the right, a technique known as fanning.
    Nathan Blaine did not like fanning as a technique for rapid shooting. There were only two excuses for using it: one was when you were standing belly to belly with the man you were shooting at, and the other was when your hand wasn't big enough to cock with the thumb on recoil, in the accepted fashion.
    Jeff's hand simply wasn't big enough, so he would have to fan.
    Not that it bothered him. His pa had taught him more about guns than most people learn in a lifetime.
    As he neared the creek, Jeff practiced rolling the gun in his right hand. But two and a quarter pounds, plus the added weight of the ammunition, was a lot of weight to spin on one finger, even for a man. Jeff stopped it and was carrying the revolver at his side when he arrived at the grove of cottonwoods.
    Bud Slater and Rob Lustrum, two boys from the academy, were already there. Jeff scowled as he saw them.
    “Did anybody see you coming this way?”
    “No,” Bud Slater said. “We come up the path as if we was goin' to the pasture. Gee, is that a real Colt's?”
    “Sure. What did you think it was?” He enjoyed watching their eyes grow wider.
    “Do you think Alex'll show up?” Rob Lustrum wanted to know.
    “Maybe. If he doesn't lose his guts,” Jeff said. He spun the revolver once for their benefit. Then his trigger finger began to weaken from the weight and he shoved the revolver into his waistband.
    “Is that your pa's gun?” Bud asked in awe.
    But Jeff was here on serious business; he had no time for talking. He walked off to the crest of the rise, and looked down toward the town. He could see no one.
    Alex wasn't going to show up. He had known it all along. Well, he'd wait a while longer. He didn't much care whether Alex showed up or not. He wanted to feel the Colt's in his hand but he was afraid his arm