Read Online The Plains of Laramie by Lauran Paine - Free Book Online Page B

though a dismal apathy had swept over her. “You’ll never be able to get away with it.”
    “Let us worry about that, Toma. You jus’ sign the deed.”
    The Vermilion Kid was as tense as a coiled spring. He was prepared to go into violent action on an instant’s notice. There was a long silence from the other room, then the Kid relaxed and turned away as he heard one of the men sigh and speak: “That’s more like it, Toma. Now you’re as safe as can be.”
    The Kid was lowering himself out of the window when Toma answered, but he couldn’t hear her reply. He thought: You’re not safe, though, Jeff Beale. You’ve made the greatest mistake of your life .
    The Kid ran in a crouched, zigzag course back to his waiting horse. He slipped off the hobbles after pulling on the split-ear bridle, mounted in a flying leap of frantic hoofbeats, and rode down the night like a wraith of doom, thundering along the trackless range, a faint, ghostly figure bent on an act of justice that would thwart, if timely enough, the evil plans of two ruthless murderers.
    Holbrook was noisy in a desultory sort of way. It was a weekday night and the revelers that inundated the town on Saturday night were mostly asleep in the bunkhouses across the cattle country. Even so, however, there was enough noise to mute down the thundering approach of hoofbeats. The raucous screech of a protesting piano, accompanied by a nasal tenor, frequently drowned out by the laughter, shouts, and curses of the saloon clientele, ignored the narrow-eyed rider who swung down inside Tallant’s livery barn, tense and with probing, hard eyes of smoke-gray.
    Disturbed in his secret libations, the bleary-eyed hostler came grumblingly out of a dark stall where a mound of unclean hay served as couch, bed, and bar. Looking up when he was close enough to discern the night traveler, the hostler gave a small start and shook his head. “Too late, pardner, too late.”
    The Kid stepped forward. “What d’ya mean, too late?”
    “Jus’ what I said. Sheriff Dugan’s got a warrant out for you. Dead or alive. You’re a goner.”
    The Kid appraised the man. He wondered if the man was too drunk to trust. “Pardner, just how drunk are you, anyway?”
    The hostler’s face got a sullen smear of color in his cheeks and his eyes were surly. “Not so drunk that I don’t know a thing or two. Why?”
    The Kid jumped in whole hog. He had no other choice. “Because, pardner, a man’s life depends on you tonight.”
    “That so? Whose?”
    “Mine, amigo , mine.”
    The hostler looked owlishly at the Kid and a stray strand of his old-time decency flared up in a quick, final effort to assert itself. The man’s voice was suddenly very steady and sincere and his jaw shot out a little. “All right, pardner, start at the beginnin’.”
    “Tallant an’ Jeff Beale are on their way here to kill Dodge’s horse tonight.”
    The hostler made a forlorn little clucking sound in his throat. “An’ the poor critter’s on the mend, too. Damned if I don’t believe he’s goin’ to pull through, after all.”
    The Kid let the interruption run its course. “Listen, pardner, I want you to hide my horse in one of those back stalls. Don’t unsaddle or unbridle him. Jus’ close the door to the stall and fork him a little hay so’s he’ll be quiet.”
    “That all?”
    “No. I want you to take a note over to Sheriff Dugan an’ then stay out of the barn until the shootin’s over. Understand?”
    “I reckon. Where’s the note?”
    “Take care of my horse an’ I’ll write it.”
    The hostler nodded, took the Kid’s reins, and led the black horse off into the dark recesses of the oldbarn. The Kid tore a handbill of himself off the barn wall, scrabbled a stubby pencil out of a shirt pocket, and wrote frowningly until the sot returned. He folded the coarse paper and handed it to his accomplice. “Pardner, here’s where you’ve got the whip-hand. If you double-cross me an’ hand that