Eureka Read Online Free Page B

He simply stood up, stood straight with his hands hanging loosely at his sides. His eyes were narrowed slightly. Nothing in his face changed before his right arm moved fluidly up, his hand drawing the .44 as it passed his hip, his left hand fanning back the hammer as his hand stretched out, and
    BOOM!
    Both boys jumped as the gun roared.
    The red shell exploded. Pieces flying left and right, the main piece jumping straight up. As it fell, Tallman fanned off a second shot and it disintegrated.
    And just as quickly, the gun was back in its holster and Tallman reached up and tenderly stroked the curves in his mustache.
    â€œYou mean that one?” he said.
    He took out the pistol, flipped the retainer on the cylinder open and emptied the spent casings into his hand and dropped them in his pocket, then inserted fresh bullets into the slots and flipped the retainer shut. He handed the gun butt-first to Brodie.
    â€œGive it a try,” he said.
    The Irish kid took the pistol, stuck the gun between his pants and shirt so the hammer would not catch on his belt. It was on his left side, the butt facing to the right so he could cross-draw. He looked for a target. Twenty feet away a bottle rolled on the beach at the edge of the surf.
    He shook his hands and shoulders loose.
    His right arm moved swiftly across his body, hauled the big Frontiersman from its resting place. His left hand snapped the hammer back as he raised the gun at arm’s length and squeezed his hand. The gun roared, kicked his arm almost straight up. Sand kicked up an inch from the bottle.
    â€œWell, damn,” he muttered.
    â€œThat was a good shot,” Tallman said, nodding assurance. “Just a hair to the right.”
    Brodie smiled, dropped the empty casing into his hand and gave the casing and the gun back to the sheriff.
    â€œHow about you, Ben?” Tallman asked.
    â€œNah,” Ben answered. “You know I never got the hang of it.”
    Tallman looked over his shoulder. The sun was turning red, sinking toward the horizon. He slapped them both on the shoulder.
    â€œYou boys better get on up the Hill. Be dinnertime soon.”

    They rode the length of the beach to the cliff trail, a wide walkway huddled against the face of the cliff, which rose six hundred feet up the sea side of the Hill and ended at the edge of Grand View, the O’Dell estate. The grand, white-columned mansion sat back from the main road at the end of a drive lined on both sides by small bushes. Behind it and six hundred feet down, the Pacific Ocean stretched to the horizon.
    It and the Gorman estate were the two grandest houses on the Hill.
    A one-horse surrey was coming up the road from the strip of stores that serviced the families on the Hill. The driver was a powerfully built black man in his twenties, who spoke with an almost musical lilt. His name was Noah. Rumor had it that Shamus O’Dell had bought Noah’s mother at a slave market on one of the Caribbean islands. He had bought her as a housekeeper, not knowing she was pregnant. Her son had been raised by O’Dell and educated by his wife, Kate. Noah was fiercely loyal to the family, sometimes acting as a bodyguard for Shamus; sometimes watching over Delilah, who was O’Dell’s daughter and one of the three girls in the carriage; sometimes driving the family automobile, a German Daimler, which looked like a formal horse carriage powered by a gas engine and was the only automobile in the valley.
    O’Dell never took the car down the hill, fearing the brakes might not hold or it would get mired in mud. So he showed off in it sticking to the broad, forested, five-mile-wide northern mesa, the Hill, where the families of fourteen tycoons lived, five appearing only on weekends. Noah proudly squired O’Dell along the horse trails that served as roads, taking him to the club where the rich men and their male out-of-town guests drank at the bar or played cards. On occasion, Noah drove