Read Online Stamping Ground by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online Page B

can make it as hot in here as it is out there.” I slid out the Deane-Adams and pointed it in the general direction of his groin. He kept his calm.
    â€œI don’t think you will. You’re sworn to uphold the law.”
    I grinned and pulled back the hammer. As I did so I heard another weapon being cocked behind me. It could have been an echo. I knew it wasn’t.
    Harms smiled, this time all the way. “It might be a good idea to give me the gun.” He came forward with his hand outstretched. “Sergeant Burdett has a Spencer rifle pointed at the back of your head.”
    â€œHe speaks the truth, Page.” Jac’s tone was noncommittal.
    I shifted my head just far enough to take in the outline of the man leaning through the open window behind my right shoulder, a rifle in his hands. I held onto the revolver. Something in my expression halted the officer in mid-step. His smile drained from his features.
    â€œYou know,” I said, “everyone thinks the gun at a man’s back is deadlier than the one in his hand, but that’s not true. They both kill just the same.”
    Drops of moisture sparkled on Harms’s tanned forehead. This wasn’t his game, I could tell. He was used to shooting it out with rifles and howitzers across several hundred yards of open ground until one side or the other gave up or ranout of ammunition. Here there was no room for his brand of bravery. Face to face with .45-caliber death in that narrow room, he felt fear for what was probably the first time in his career.
    In that instant I threw myself from the bench, hit the floor, and rolled. There was an explosion and a cloud of splinters near my head and something hot seared my right cheek, but I kept moving. I came up flat against the wall with my gun still in my grip.
    As the sergeant maneuvered to get something worthwhile in his sights, I grabbed the Spencer’s barrel with my free hand and jerked it downward. It throbbed in my hand, belched flame. One of the broad white planks in the floor splintered and split down the middle from one end of the room to the other. The simultaneous roar set my ears to jangling and brought dust and loose dirt showering down from the rafters. I twisted the gun from Burdett’s desperate grasp and pulled it through the window.
    Harms went for his Colt. He was pretty fast. He had the strap almost undone by the time Hudspeth, back on his feet, hauled out his Smith & Wesson and clapped the muzzle to the major’s temple.
    â€œGo for it,” he said. “Please go for it.”
    Harms left the Colt where it was.
    I had Burdett covered with the Deane-Adams. Short and thickset, he had sunken eyes overhung with black, bushy brows and a cleft chin bunched up like a fist. Tiny blue specks peppered the left side of his face just beneath the leathery skin. Some time or other he had come within a hair’s breadth of having his head blown off by a shotgun blast. His left eye glittered unnaturally in the lamplight, and I knew it was glass. His nose was an incongruous pug, but he had filled the gap between it and his wide mouth with a thick black moustache. I counted to ten, then extended the Spencer to him. He stared at it as if he’d never seen it before, then, gingerly, as if he thought it might blow up, took hold of it and hauled it back through the opening. Hudspeth watched, thunderstruck.
    â€œWhat the hell—”
    â€œThree men don’t stand a lot of chance against a garrison full of soldiers.” I handed Harms my revolver. He took it hesitantly. “Give him yours before somebody gets hurt,” I told the marshal. I was having trouble talking. I relaxed my face muscles and realized I’d been grinning all this time.
    It took a few seconds, but finally Hudspeth sighed and turned his weapon over to the major.
    â€œOne underarmed deputy and two old has-beens, Major.” My resistance to temptation never was much to speak of.
    Harms