Read Online Hell's Marshal by Chris Barili - Free Book Online

back.
    “And when this is over,” he said, “I’ll go back to Hell where I belong, but you’ll remain here.”
    She looked away, turning her back to him and crossing her arms over her chest.
    “He knew we were coming,” he muttered. She turned back around, head cocked to one side. “O’Kelley slipped into a kind of trance and told me James knows we’re coming for him.”
    She shrugged. “Lucky guess. He had to know the judges would send someone.”
    “I don’t think so. I think he knew who was coming and where we’d come from. The prospector met us in that pass, after all.”
    “Why didn’t he kill us there?” she asked, sliding close and leaning her shoulder on his chest. “Would’ve caught us with our petticoats up around our bellybuttons.”
    Frank pondered that, but couldn’t come up with anything that made sense.
    “Maybe he wasn’t ready or needed time to gain more power. Or maybe, at that point, he was still just an old man. But I know one thing, damn straight.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Someone tipped him off,” Frank answered, returning his gaze to the street. “Hell has a mole.”
     

CHAPTER NINE
    The sun sliced through the thick morning air like a golden knife blade, carving the street outside into slices of dark and light. Frank had slept only a little, returning to the window an hour or so before dawn, but his body felt restored a bit. Certainly not alive, not in the truest sense of the word, but well enough to attack their morning tasks with some vigor.
    The old man with the milky eyes brought them a breakfast of eggs and bacon, with cold milk to wash it down. Curtis attacked the food like a ravenous wolf, keeping watch out the window while his friends exchanged confused glances.
    “You sure we can’t eat?” Spike asked, licking his lips.
    Frank had to admit, the crisp smell of bacon taunted him, as if it knew a man in Hell felt hungry every minute of every day.
    “I’m sure,” Frank said. “Buzzy was very specific.”
    Curtis choked on a piece of bacon, spitting the fatty meat out the window and pointing, holding his throat with the other hand. The three rushed to his side, Spike thumping him between the shoulder blades.
    “That’s one of ‘em,” the boy choked. “One of the new James gang. The man in the black vest.”
    Frank should have noticed the man right away, with his confident swagger, darting eyes, and one hand always poised near the pistol on his hip. He’d faced many men like him in life, killed most.
    The man strolled across the dusty street, trying too hard to look casual, but glanced at the Scriver building with the regularity of a Swiss watch. He climbed the steps to the front door of a drug store down the street from the hotel and stepped inside, flashing one last too-cautious glance at the bank as he went.
    “I know a casing when I see one,” Spike said. “Men like that used to stake out my bar in Tombstone, trying to figure if I was worth robbing.”
    “You weren’t,” Frank said. Spike looked hurt for a moment, then shrugged.
    A few minutes later, the man left the store and strolled north across the square, still trying to look nonchalant while he studied the Scriver building. Then he turned right and disappeared.
    “West on Fourth Street,” Spike said.
    Frank looked at Curtis. “Is he…dead, like us?”
    The boy shook his head.
    “Okay, then let’s see where he’s going.” Frank loosened his pistol in its holster and started for the door before Camille stopped him with a hand on his elbow.
    “Find out where he goes, then meet me back here.”
    “Where are you going?” he asked.
    She pulled her purse from her belt and jingled the coins inside. “Shopping. A girl can’t exactly flirt with a man while she’s dressed like one.”
    “I know what you’re thinking,” Frank grumbled, but she didn’t let him finish.
    “Then you know I’m right. This is the best way to find out what’s going on. Spike, I could use a man to carry