Read Online Solomon's Vineyard by Jonathan Latimer - Free Book Online Page B

trying to quiet
Winnie.
    “Don't, Winnie; don't,” Jonesy was saying.
    Ginger stared at me, her face excited. “Scared?” I asked her.
    “Get me a gun.”
    I peered into the trophy room. The bartender was still shooting out
his window. I could just see him through the smoke. I saw Waterman and
the two wounded men on the floor. The tommy-gun began to work again;
the bullets knocking pieces off the fireplace.
    “If you think I'm going to let you go out there, you're nuts,” I told
Ginger.
    Winnie had calmed down a little. “Is he dead?” she asked between
sobs.
    “He's fine,” I said.
    There was a shout outside and the shooting stopped. The silence
seemed strange. I put my. revolver away and found a pack of cigarettes.
I lit one for Ginger, and then one for myself. The smoke burned my
mouth. “I guess we beat 'em off,” I said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
    LIKE HELL we had beat them off. We found that out when Davison went
into the trophy room to look at Caryle Waterman. The bartender by the
window motioned him to bend down, but he didn't pay any attention. He
walked over to the body and just as he looked down at it somebody
outside let go at him. I saw the flash and heard the crack of
the bullet, and when Davison went down I thought he'd been shot, too.
But he crawled back to the office like a crab.
    “God!” he said when he stood up. “That was close.”
    Winnie asked: “Caryle?”
    “He's dead.”
    She must have known it, but it was a shock anyway. She began to cry.
“We'll all be killed,” she sobbed. “All of us.”
    “Now, there,” Jonesy said, patting her back.
    Ginger sat on Papas's table and crossed her legs. She had long,
slender legs. I wished we were alone. Blood always excites me. “It
looks like a stand-off,” Ginger said.
    “So far,” I said.
    “What are they trying to do?” Davison asked. “I never heard of
anything like this.”
    I took my eyes off Ginger's legs. “Gangsters,” I said.
    “But they've gone out of style,” Davison said. “They don't have
gangsters any more.”
    “Suppose you go out and tell them that,” I said.
    Winnie said: “Why don't we call the police?”
    That was a good idea. I wondered why I hadn't thought of it. I lifted
the phone on Papas's desk. It was dead. I tossed the phone on the
floor. The crash made everybody jump. I heard a noise in the trophy
room. I looked out the door and saw Gus Papas crawling across the
floor. He caught hold of the first wounded man, the one by the
fireplace, and dragged him along. He brought the man into the office.
    “Oh, boy! this is terrible,” Papas said cheerfully.
    He started to pick the telephone off the floor. “No use,” Ginger
said. I looked at the wounded man. He wasn't going to die. The bleeding
from his shoulder had stopped”.
    “We hold them off,” Papas said.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “Got three men in back,” Papas said. “And me and the bartender here.
They don't get in.”
    He looked pretty happy. He had proved he was a hell of a fighter. He
had driven off Pug Banta.
    Winnie was sobbing again and the men were trying to comfort her. I
crawled across the trophy room to the bartender by the window. He was
peeking out through one of the curtains.
    “What are they doing?”
    “Get your own window,” he snarled.
    I crawled to another window. By moving the curtain a little I could
sec out. There was a fire going in back of the cars. I could see the
moving shadows of men by the gasoline pump. They were careful to keep
out of range of the cabin. After a while two men with torches left the
fire. The flames of the torches rose high. They had been soaked in
gasoline. The men moved towards us, keeping behind the cars. I saw the
bartender raise his rifle. We waited while the men crawled along, their
torches lighting up trees and bushes and the parked cars.
    Suddenly two machine-guns began to rake the house. I could feel the
curtain twitch from the lead. The men with the torches ran