Blood on Mcallister Read Online Free Page B

visit with them.
    â€˜Say, that’s great,’ Gage told him, his honest face beaming, ‘we could meet up in Clanton. You could see me compete. They have a good boy over there and the town is puttin’ up a lot against me.’
    â€˜You mean there’s a local champion?’
    â€˜Yeah. This feller claims he can out-run and out-fight and out-jump me. His old man’s backing him to a tune of something like a thousand dollars.’
    McAllister and Deblon whistled their appreciation of such a princely sum. If that was the stake of one man, what would all the accumulated bets amount to? Their respect for Billy Gage heightened. He told them about the Clanton champion. Young fellow about his own age and with a local reputation for toughness and wildness. His old man was the big auger in the country. He could control a cattle empire and an army of riders, but he couldn’t do nothing with his own son. They nodded. It was often the way. McAllister was enthusiastic. He’d sure like to see Gage take this boy on.
    â€˜My money’ll be on you, son,’ he told Billy. ‘I seen you run and I’ve felt how you can fight.’
    They all laughed.
    Harry Shultz came up. He was mad all through still and his eyes snapped angrily. It was time Gage took a bath and a rub down. He couldn’t lounge around like other folk. He wasa champion in training. He’d taken a beating from McAllister and that showed that Shultz would have to tighten up. He hauled Gage out of there and the big blond man went meek as a lamb.
    McAllister looked after them. He felt a little sorry for Gage. The boy was nothing better than a performing bear. Then he forgot about him. He and Frank got to drinking in earnest, swapping yarns and talking of old times, such as when they had been town marshals together down in Fort Griffin, Texas. That sure had been a wild town. These northern cowtowns were nothing more than kindergartens compared with them. Why, do you remember the time when …? It went on like that for a long time. They laughed, they slapped each other on the back, they demanded another bottle, it came and they shrank its contents a little more than slightly.
    Night came. The saloon filled, men came to buy McAllister a drink, McAllister bought them a drink, the whole world was a comrade. McAllister spared a thought for Gage and his virtuous teetotal life, felt pity and faded the picture out with another drink. The night roistered on and finally Frank decided he’d best go see if the town was behaving itself while he could still stand. McAllister thought that bed wouldn’t be a bad idea. Frank said he’d find him the best hotel in town, nothing was too good for his old friend Remington McAllister, but first he must hand over his gun. Sure, McAllister said, who needed a gun in a town policed by his friend Frank Deblon. Solemnly, the battered old Remington forty-four with the worn cedar butt was handed to the bar-keep and they wandered out of the Bull’s Head into the night.
    Frank led him to the Bradbury House on Lincoln after they had picked up McAllister’s gear at the livery and the proprietor gave McAllister the best room in the house overlooking the street. The big man was feeling pretty sleepy by this time and Frank heaved off his boots for him as he lay on the bed. He was snoring by the time Frank blew out the light and tiptoed from the room as silently as a raging buffalo bull.

Three
    McAllister woke with a start and knew in that first instant of wakefulness that he was still drunk. That was warning enough and mentally he fought to pull himself together. He listened with drunken care. He was no longer alone in the room. He could hear a man breathing.
    Carefully, he slid his hand under the pillow and found nothing. He remembered handing his gun in at the Bull’s Head and cursed silently.
    A match scratched.
    McAllister froze and almost closed his eyes so that he could watch the room