Read Online skeletons by Glendon Swarthout - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Glendon Swarthout
Tags: crime and mystery
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Buell Wood, who twice fires a revolver at the runners.
Neither being hit, Gooding and Pennington swerve behind the Coupe, from which cover they draw pistols and return a fusillade in the direction of the Runabout, missing it but shattering the west window of the showroom. It collapses in shards with a crash almost musical, and with it the injunction to “WATCH THE 4’DS GO BY!”
At right center, the two ‘lookers” dive full-length under the Coupe.
The salesman gapes.
Mrs. Marsh sits as though turned to stone. Buell Wood has taken his own cover behind the “mother-in-law seat” of the Runabout. Thinking to flush the pair into the open, he lets go two rounds at the Coupe. One breaks a door window, the other pierces a headlamp. It is a Jno. Brown Model 15, mounted with both doors opening from the center to facilitate lighting the burner. Wood curses the Colts. It is clear to him already that the New Navy will never be a satisfactory target weapon. The light, smooth trigger pull which distinguishes single-action simply cannot be obtained.
The Coupe responds. The Runabout’s windshield disintegrates, as does a glass panel in one of the brass, kerosene-burning sidelamps—Jno. Brown Model 60’s—below the windshield adjacent to the aluminum hood.
The fact is, Tigh Gooding and George Pennington cannot at this point hit a bull in the ass with a bushel basket. Finally—after all the stories they have heard, the dime novels they have read, the Western movies they have seen, the fantasies they have played out to gory and heroic conclusions—finally they are eye to eye and gut to gut with the real thing. The showdown with somebody over something they have dreamed of and drooled for has come at last. And they are totally unprepared. And terrified. If a new century has reduced them from cowboys to pimpled, ignorant ranch hands, truth drops them now to the lowest rung of the ladder. Truth turns them into bite-tongue, itch-crotch boys who sweat panic from every pore.
“You quit this! You quit!”
It is the salesman, shouting, standing his outraged ground with hands on hips, swiveling his head to confront as many participants as possible.
“This here is a business establishment! I won’t have no shooting—”
He is interrupted by the report of a gun and, almost simultaneously, a deafening, metallic explosion. The three Model T’s shake and shimmy. Icicles of glass cascade from the top of the west window of the agency, broken earlier. Bits of brass clang the bookkeeper’s cage with buckshot impact.
Determined to drive his prey from shelter, Buell Wood had climbed into and laid prone across the front seat of the Runabout, which is upholstered in diamond tufts of genuine leather installed over horsehair pads. Using the seat side as a rest, he had placed his revolver barrel over it, taken dead aim, fired. He had put a bullet through the brass skin of the carbide generator mounted on the left-hand running board of the Coupe. This was a cylinder divided into two tanks, in the lower a supply of calcium carbide, in the upper a volume of water which dripped slowly onto the carbide and formed a head of acetylene gas. Routed from generator to headlamps by means of red rubber tubing, the gas, once the burners were lit, provided the night driver a flickering illumination for his way. Blowing up the generator, however, proves only partially fruitful.
George Pennington dashes from the Coupe to a place of safety behind the Touring Car. One more sally and he can be through the side door into the garage.
The salesman flings himself under the Coupe and attempts to crawl over the two “lookers.” He has, unfortunately, an abundant rump. It wedges between the backside of a “looker” and the six-rivet rear axle housing so solidly that he is immobilized, his legs exposed.
On her stool in the cage, Mrs. Marsh has not moved.
Tigh Gooding remains behind the Coupe, reloading his pistol. Like his partner’s, it is a .30-20
Neither being hit, Gooding and Pennington swerve behind the Coupe, from which cover they draw pistols and return a fusillade in the direction of the Runabout, missing it but shattering the west window of the showroom. It collapses in shards with a crash almost musical, and with it the injunction to “WATCH THE 4’DS GO BY!”
At right center, the two ‘lookers” dive full-length under the Coupe.
The salesman gapes.
Mrs. Marsh sits as though turned to stone. Buell Wood has taken his own cover behind the “mother-in-law seat” of the Runabout. Thinking to flush the pair into the open, he lets go two rounds at the Coupe. One breaks a door window, the other pierces a headlamp. It is a Jno. Brown Model 15, mounted with both doors opening from the center to facilitate lighting the burner. Wood curses the Colts. It is clear to him already that the New Navy will never be a satisfactory target weapon. The light, smooth trigger pull which distinguishes single-action simply cannot be obtained.
The Coupe responds. The Runabout’s windshield disintegrates, as does a glass panel in one of the brass, kerosene-burning sidelamps—Jno. Brown Model 60’s—below the windshield adjacent to the aluminum hood.
The fact is, Tigh Gooding and George Pennington cannot at this point hit a bull in the ass with a bushel basket. Finally—after all the stories they have heard, the dime novels they have read, the Western movies they have seen, the fantasies they have played out to gory and heroic conclusions—finally they are eye to eye and gut to gut with the real thing. The showdown with somebody over something they have dreamed of and drooled for has come at last. And they are totally unprepared. And terrified. If a new century has reduced them from cowboys to pimpled, ignorant ranch hands, truth drops them now to the lowest rung of the ladder. Truth turns them into bite-tongue, itch-crotch boys who sweat panic from every pore.
“You quit this! You quit!”
It is the salesman, shouting, standing his outraged ground with hands on hips, swiveling his head to confront as many participants as possible.
“This here is a business establishment! I won’t have no shooting—”
He is interrupted by the report of a gun and, almost simultaneously, a deafening, metallic explosion. The three Model T’s shake and shimmy. Icicles of glass cascade from the top of the west window of the agency, broken earlier. Bits of brass clang the bookkeeper’s cage with buckshot impact.
Determined to drive his prey from shelter, Buell Wood had climbed into and laid prone across the front seat of the Runabout, which is upholstered in diamond tufts of genuine leather installed over horsehair pads. Using the seat side as a rest, he had placed his revolver barrel over it, taken dead aim, fired. He had put a bullet through the brass skin of the carbide generator mounted on the left-hand running board of the Coupe. This was a cylinder divided into two tanks, in the lower a supply of calcium carbide, in the upper a volume of water which dripped slowly onto the carbide and formed a head of acetylene gas. Routed from generator to headlamps by means of red rubber tubing, the gas, once the burners were lit, provided the night driver a flickering illumination for his way. Blowing up the generator, however, proves only partially fruitful.
George Pennington dashes from the Coupe to a place of safety behind the Touring Car. One more sally and he can be through the side door into the garage.
The salesman flings himself under the Coupe and attempts to crawl over the two “lookers.” He has, unfortunately, an abundant rump. It wedges between the backside of a “looker” and the six-rivet rear axle housing so solidly that he is immobilized, his legs exposed.
On her stool in the cage, Mrs. Marsh has not moved.
Tigh Gooding remains behind the Coupe, reloading his pistol. Like his partner’s, it is a .30-20
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