Read Online The Law of the Trigger by Clifton Adams - Free Book Online

Cal have a fuss with Stringer, that's none of my business.
    Dunc was beginning to guess what the trouble might be. He knew Cal, and he had heard that Leah Stringer was a long way from being ugly. Dunc Lester, he told himself, the smartest thing you can do is turn right around and head back for the ridge.
    But he didn't turn around. The more he thought about it, the less he liked it, and the more he hoped that he had figured it out all wrong. Getting Mort Stringer turned against them would be the worst thing that could happen. That old man could rile up the hills all the way to the Verdigris, if he ever got his dander up at them.
    Cautiously Dunc urged his bay forward. Almost immediately he stopped, hearing Preacher Stringer's shrill, high-pitched voice ringing through the trees. Dunc tied the bay to a young sapling and cocked his head curiously. He was still too far away to tell what Stringer was worked up about, but he was sure preaching hell-fire to somebody!
    Well, since I've come this far... Dunc reasoned. He pulled his shotgun from the saddle boot and moved forward on foot, alert as a mother doe, silent as an Indian.
    He reached a small rise at the edge of the Stringer clearing. Lying on his belly behind some brush, he could see four of them, Mort and the girl, Ike and Cal. Cal was stretched out on his back, his good-looking face ugly with pain, and Ike was slashing at his brother's trousers with a pocketknife.
    “That old bastard!” Cal whined. “He shot me! You hear me, Ike? He shot me!”
    “Shut up,” Ike snarled coldly. “You're lucky I don't finish the job for him!”
    Violently Ike ripped the leg from Cal's trousers, slashed it with his knife, forming a compress with one half of the rough material and a bandage with the other. He worked angrily and silently at bandaging his brother's leg, completely ignoring Mort Stringer's shouting. The girl, on her hands and knees a little behind her father, did not utter a sound. Dunc judged that she had been knocked to the ground, probably by Mort himself, for she shook her head dumbly and made no effort to get tip.
    “He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword!” Mort Stringer ranted. Jabbing a bony finger at Ike as though it were a pistol, he screamed, “You're wastin' your time, Ike Brunner, for the wages of sin is death! Thus spoke the Lord, and you cannot thwart the will of the Lord! The black shadow of the Angel of Death falls over both of you! The curse of God is upon the name of Brunner and upon its followers!”
    Ike glanced up in cold rage but did not speak. Dunc Lester, from his place in the underbrush, was slightly stunned by the steady flow of insane doggerel that came from Mort Stringer's mouth. Maybe Mort had been alone in these hills too long. Maybe the shock of losing his woman had done this to him; Dunc didn't know. But he knew that Preacher Stringer was not the same man that he had seen before on rare occasions. This man was not right in his head; his eyes were glassy and vacant, his voice was too shrill.
    It gave Dunc a spooky feeling just looking at him, a dirty, gangly skeleton of a man whose baggy overalls seemed to hang on the sharp bones as a hat hangs on a peg. In one clawlike hand he held a long-barreled rifle, but his eyes said that he was not aware of having it.
    Dunc looked at the girl again and felt a pity for her that he had never before experienced. It sure couldn't have been much fun for her, he thought, living here in these hills with that crazy old man. Of course, he had no way of knowing just what she and Cal Brunner had been up to, but whatever it was, he guessed that he couldn't blame her much.
    “The Lord's judgment be upon you!” Mort cried, suddenly brandishing the rifle over his head. Ike continued to bandage his brother's leg and did not look up. “The Lord's will be done!” Mort shouted. “To you who have brought sin and corruption upon my own flesh and blood!” He stared glassily at the rifle and then at Cal