The Six-Gun Tarot Read Online Free Page A

Promise.”
    Jim felt his memory grope around to fill in some detail, some impression that what Mutt was saying was solid. There was nothing. Had he been so tired he hadn’t seen or heard the Indian? Or was Mutt like the Indians in the dime novels he read, the ones with the orange covers and the stories of the wilderness? Those Indians were invisible, like smoke, or haints.
    “I rightly don’t know,” Jim said, covering the pocket of his pants with his hand. “I ain’t got no power, Mutt. If I did, you think I’d be stuck out here?”
    “Your folks know you out here?”
    “Not much work back home,” Jim said, the lie sliding smoothly from his lips this time; he had plenty of practice telling this one and he had his footing about him again. “I told Ma and Pa I’d come out here and get a good-paying railroad job, send some money home.”
    “Back to Kansas, right?”
    “Yup.”
    The cold air around them suddenly filled with howls and yips. Mutt stood again and his hand fell to his gun.
    “Coyotes?” Jim said as he moved closer to the fire.
    Mutt nodded. “They can see it too,” he said.
    “What?”
    There was movement in darkness, a swarm of dark motes hurtling forward across the plain toward the fire. Separating, accelerating. Hot breath, bloody eyes.
    “Whatever that power is you don’t have,” he said as he pulled a burning branch out of the fire.
    Jim rose, shakily, and grabbed a torch as well. He dug into his pant pocket frantically. “Is this it?” he said, and held up his father’s jade eye.
    A snarling furry shape lunged out of the darkness toward Jim’s hand. Mutt was suddenly there; his firebrand smashed into the coyote’s flank with a whoosh and a wild shower of sparks. The animal yelped and crashed to the ground. It scampered to its feet and disappeared into the darkness. Another member of the pack snapped at Mutt’s vulnerable side, but Jim was there with his own torch. The animal howled in pain and retreated. The boy and the Indian stood back-to-back as the night encircled them and showed its sharp teeth.
    “There’s got to be a dozen of them,” Jim said between ragged, frightened breaths.
    Mutt grunted and brandished the torch. “Sorry to say, I’ve got a big family.”
    “What?”
    “They’re my kin.”
    “Your kin?”
    “My dad sent them,” Mutt said. “He loves shiny things. No chance you want to give that up, is there?”
    “It was my pa’s,” Jim said. “I’m not giving it up to a bunch of smelly curs … no offense.”
    “None taken. They’re the bad side of the family, and they really do smell.”
    A gravel-edged growl called out from the darkness. A large, grizzled coyote padded into the circle of firelight. Its one good eye glared at the Indian.
    “Squint,” Mutt said. “Didn’t know you were still prowling around doing Dad’s dirty work for him. Still haven’t learned you can’t suck up to the old man, eh?”
    Squint snarled and froth exploded from his mouth. In the firelight’s trembling shadows Jim swore the animal looked like the Devil himself.
    “Can’t do that, Squint,” Mutt said to the animal as he slid the knife free of its sheath. “It’s the boy’s birthright. Wouldn’t be proper to steal it. Besides, now that I know it’s you Dad sent out, I just want to mess with you.”
    He grinned and showed the coyote his crooked teeth as he crouched close to the earth, ready to strike. Squint growled out a command to the others and they began to howl. The one-eyed coyote hunched, ready to pounce.
    “What do think they’ll call you when you ain’t got no eyes left?” Mutt whispered.
    The thunder of a shotgun blast rolled across the plain. One of the coyotes to the left of Squint was lifted up in the air, twisted in a cloud of bloody mist and fell, twitching, to the earth. The howling stopped.
    Jim saw the vulture-man, the one Mutt had called Clay, standing in the back of the wagon, one of his shotgun’s barrels trailing silvery smoke up