Red Moon Read Online Free Page B

while back,” Weir said through split and swollen lips.
    â€œWon it, huh?” Sam said with a questioning look.
    Jenny Lynn sat quietly, watching with interest.
    â€œPoker . . . ,” said the drummer. As he spoke, he lowered his hand from his head and made a gesture as if dealing cards.
    Sam only nodded and stared at him.
    â€œIt might be a blessing you didn’t have it on, Mr. Weir,” Jenny Lynn cut into the looming silence. “It may well have gotten you killed.”
    The drummer breathed in deep and closed his eyes in reflection.
    â€œYes, that may well be,” he said, raising the wet cloth back up to his head.
    The three turned as the door opened and the shotgun rider stuck his face inside, rain running from the guttered brim of his hat.
    â€œWe’ve got both the coach horses hitched and ready, Ranger,” he said. “But your roan is acting ugly about the whole deal.”
    â€œI’ll take care of it.” Sam stood crouched and stepped toward the open door. But as he started to step down, he picked up both the carpetbag and the man’s satchel. He handed them to Dawson. “Here,” he said, “tie these on top, give these folks a little more room in here.”
    As Sam spoke, he turned and looked at the drummer to check out his reaction.
    â€œMuch obliged, Ranger,” the drummer said without hesitation, raising the wet cloth back to his face. “I feel safer you carrying a gun than I do myself, the shape I’m in.”
    As Sam shut the stagecoach door and he and Dawson walked forward, huddled against a new round of blowing rain, the shotgun rider shook the leather satchel.
    â€œYou mean this hardware drummer has himself a gun in here and wasn’t even wearing it?” he said to the Ranger. He shook his head. “Why do you think he’d do something as stupid as that?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Sam said, staring ahead to where the roan and Long stood in a driving sheet of rain. The roan reared and whinnied and pulled against the reins in Long’s hands. “But I’m working on it.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Night seeped into the black sunless sky almost without notice. The three horses pulled the coach upward onto a higher trail, skirting around a low hillside fraught with deep-cut ravines, sunken boulders and sparse piñon. In front of the two big coach horses, Sam sat atop the roan and led the team and the heavy coach upward. The roan had balked against stepping into the traces, but had finally settled and turned surly and silent as it pulled forward.
    Heavy rain fell dart-straight around the Ranger, horses and rig, while on the black horizon the wind had drawn its breath inward, beginning to circle and fashion itself into a funnel, ground to sky. The sky itself roiled atop the mad twisting wind like some mighty beast picked at with a stick, until at length the taunting would once again send it raging mindless across a hapless drowning land.
    â€œYou’re doing good,” Sam murmured down to the roan’s dripping mane. His hand sloshed inside his glove as he patted its steaming withers. Looking behind him, beyond the team of likewise steaming coach horses, Sam saw the silhouettes of Long and Dawson standing blacker than the silver rain-threaded night around them, each coachman driven to occupy his seat only out of one’s respect for the other.
    In a paler flash of lightning, the two coachmen saw the Ranger half-turned in his saddle looking back at them.
    â€œThere’s the wide cut right ahead, see it?” Long called out as distant thunder rumbled.
    â€œHe sees it,” Dawson grumbled beside Long. “He’s been seeing it. We can’t miss it ’less the trail’s washed out.”
    â€œDon’t even say that, joking,” Long replied under the pouring deluge.
    â€œI
ain’t
joking,” Dawson said in a lowered voice.
    â€œI see