The Trailsman #388 Read Online Free Page A

assembled team was amply justified by their past performance. He surveyed all of them now as they imbibed, congratulating himself yet again for his resourcefulness.
    Deuce Ulrick, Perry’s chief lieutenant, was sprawled negligently in a chintz-covered armchair, a draw-shoot artist who had learned to enjoy killing in the charnel house of the Mexican War. He was a strong, barrel-chested man with blue-black beard stubble, dead, flint-chip eyes and a mean slash of mouth like a scar. His brutal appearance belied a good brain, and his take-charge manner made him a natural leader among criminal elements.
    Appalachian Slim Robek, six foot four and whipcord thin, stood in the embrasure of a window watching the street below. He was both a dead shot with his Model 1855 Colt revolving cylinder rifle and a superlative explosives expert. His grating, girlish voice and panther-scarred face were off-putting, but the successful explosion last night attested to Perry’s canny insights into the worth of men.
    Perry’s gaze cut to the fourth man in the room, Johnny Jackson. His flat, chinless, deadpan face was unremarkable, but he was unsurpassed in the silent ambush. The expert archer could nock and shoot ten arrows with lethal accuracy while a rifleman was chambering a single round into a breechloader. His Osage-orange–wood bow strung with tough buffalo sinew was copied from the Kiowas, known for the strongest bows on the frontier. His fox-skin quiver was stuffed with fire-hardened arrows tipped with sheet-metal points, each arrow expertly crafted by Jackson himself.
    â€œI have the
utmost
confidence in you three,” Perry reiterated, collecting their glasses and filling them again. “The blast last night was crucial to Mr. Winslowe’s plans for expansion of his operation. But, as you know, he has also purchased mining rights to a second land parcel that abuts the Rio Grande.”
    â€œAt Tierra Seca, right?” Deuce Ulrick said.
    Winslowe nodded. “And a second blast must come soon. It’s best to do these, ahh, reconfigurations of the river in one fell swoop. Fortune favors the bold, not the procrastinators.”
    â€œWhen, boss?”
    â€œI’ll be discussing that with Mr. Winslowe. In the meantime you three must concentrate on Valdez.”
    â€œNow, see, that’s what I don’t get,” Ulrick said. “You say he’s out to kill you. But what the hell for?”
    Perry’s lips tightened for a moment before he waved this aside. “Let’s just say he’s on a vengeance quest. You know how these men with Latin blood are—they live for the blood feud.”
    â€œHe’s got Kiowa blood, too,” Johnny Jackson pointed out. “Them sons-a-bitches know how to kill a man fifty ways before breakfast.”
    Perry’s bland face turned grim. “Indeed. Which makes it all the more imperative that you kill him as soon as possible. I don’t think he’s figured out yet where I am—that’s why he’s watching you three like a cat on a rat.”
    â€œI mighta killed him already,” Jackson boasted. “I was too far back to see if I hit him in his lights, but he was doubled up in the saddle, all right.”
    Slim Robek turned away from the window to address the others in his hillman’s twang.
    â€œI been studying on this,” the Appalachian said in his feminine voice. “A body oughter fret this ’breed sure enough. He’s left plenty of widows and orphans. But I’m more afeared of Fargo and what he’s fixin’ to do. The boss here says Fargo’s got no call to stick around these parts and nose in, and could be that’s true. But we come nigh to killin’ him today, and from what I’ve heered of Fargo, that’s all the call he needs.”
    â€œA good point,” Perry said. “I said I
suspect
he’ll move on, but until we know more I think it might be wise to consider