The Crack in the Lens Read Online Free Page B

lawman.”
    “Yeah, well…people will surprise you, won’t they?” the marshal snarled, his hostility flaring up hot again in an instant. “I just decided there were things that needed changing around here. Things that needed to be stopped. Enough people agreed to get me elected.”
    Bales sucked in a quick breath that puffed him up like a hissing cat—and his left hand slid toward the black grip of his Lightning.
    “I don’t intend to let those people down, Amlingmeyer. So let me be clear about this: Cowboy bullshit is no longer tolerated in this town. Nowadays, men who play rough get played even rougher. So the first chance I get, you’re going to see just what kind of lawman I am—and believe me, you’re not going to like it. You understand me?”
    Gustav nodded. “I understand.”
    Bales gave us an extra moment’s glare, then turned and stomped out of sight.
    “Well, you gotta give him this much,” I said. “That was the best don’t-mess-around-in-my-town speech we’ve heard in a right long while. Maybe a tad too much of the stage about it, though. And didja notice?”
    “What do you think?” Old Red snipped.
    Translation: Of course he’d noticed.
    Bales’s left hand—the one hovering over his gun—had been trembling so bad you could hear the fingertips rattle-tapping against the holster leather.
    “Don’t let that fool you,” my brother said, staring off the way Bales had just gone. “My experience, a man with the shakes is more likely to draw than one without.”
    “Yeah. Maybe.”
    I stepped in front of Old Red so he’d have to look at me instead of gawping off at nothing. “So…what’d you do to piss the man off, anyway?”
    Gustav rubbed his chin, still brooding. “I honestly don’t know. I mean…I think I threw a punch at him the last time I saw him, but I didn’t think he’d hold that against me.”
    “You think you threw a punch at him?”
    Old Red nodded.
    “But that shouldn’t have bothered him?”
    My brother nodded again.
    “That settles it,” I said. “Come on.”
    I started off up the sidewalk with my brother in tow. He wasn’t accustomed to following my lead, so the only way to be sure he’d come along was grab an arm and drag him again.
    “Come on where?” he grumbled.
    “Seems to me you’ve got another story needs tellin’,” I said, “and the place to tell it also happens to be the best place to dig us up some gossip on Ragsdale and Bock and your ol’ pal the marshal. All you gotta do is point the way.”
    Old Red jerked his arm free—and said, “Turn here.”
    For all our tramping around town that day, I’d seen little that truly seemed seamy. In fact, the most sordid den of iniquity I’d spied was a billiard hall.
    But left and then left again and there it was: a sleazy little saloon, dark and dank and fit only for the dregs of society. Which, to judge by our experience with the local law, now included us.
    So in we went.

4

A Fountain Filled with Blood
    Or, Old Red and I Fish for Gossip and Catch Hell
    The name of the saloon was, apparently, Saloon, as that was the only word on the dingy sign out front. Along the same line, the solitary bartender inside could have been named Mr. Bartender, so standard a dive barman was he: dirty-shirted, stubble-faced, slump-shouldered, sallow.
    As for the clientele, you’d have to label them “non ex is tent.” Gustav and I were the only two patrons—and only one of us was welcome.
    In Saloon, it seemed, the social order of San Marcos was turned on its head. Now it was my brother receiving the (snaggle-toothed) smile, while I was judged unworthy of more than a curled lip.
    It was irritating, but hardly surprising. The place was tucked away on a dusty side street across from the railroad stockyard—which made it a cowboy joint. In such establishments as that, a respectably dressed fellow like myself would get no respect at all.
    Once Old Red and I had our beers (mine already half-emptied thanks to the