High and Wild Read Online Free Page A

of the long, rectangular front windows, evoking an anguished scream from outside.
    â€œWanted to pay my respects to Villarreal!”
    Haskell shot a rurale who’d just dived into the hotel through the first window to the right of the door.
    â€œAnd yeah, I’m a bit of a show off!” he added.
    â€œI have to admit, you make me horny as hell! But where’s the girl we’re after, lover?”
    â€œFollow me, chiquita !”
    The roar had resumed from below as Haskell swung around and ran down the mouth of an intersecting hall that was decorated with broken statues and candle lanterns flickering and smoking in wall brackets. There were doors in both walls—some closed, some open, some nonexistent or cracked or bullet-pocked.
    Vaguely, as he and Sonoma ran, Haskell reflected that the Palais Royal had likely fallen considerably in the years since Villarreal’s gang of outlaw rurales had taken over La Ciudad.
    Guns cracked and popped in the saloon behind him. That was to be expected now that nearly every rurale in the village was storming into the hotel. But Haskell hadn’t expected to hear shots in front of him, sounding as though they were originating from behind one of the hall’s closed doors. The muffled pops seemed to be originating from the last one on the right at the hall’s end—the very door Haskell was heading for.
    Behind that same door, a girl screamed.
    Haskell threw his weight, backed with his running momentum, against the door. The stout walnut panel ruptured. Cracks showed the form of a cross. As Haskell backed up and threw himself against it once more, the door broke all the way through. The Pinkerton went storming into the room, stumbling and piling up on a thick, red rug.
    He rolled and came up on his heels, aiming both pistols straight out in front of him.
    A man was crouched against the wall to his right. A tall rurale —hatless, bearded, middle-aged, his eyes scrunched with pain. He held his left hand to the handle of a knife protruding from his neck. With his right hand, he aimed a .44 Colt at a blond-haired girl poking her head out from behind heavy wine-red drapes covering the large, high-ceilinged room’s far window.
    â€œ Puta ! ” the wounded rurale bellowed. Showing his teeth, he fired at the girl, his bullet plunking into the adobe wall only inches from her head, which she quickly pulled back behind the drapes with a shrill scream.
    Haskell yelled, “Get down, girl!” and swung his pistols at the rurale piled up at the base of the wall.
    As the rurale swung his own revolver toward Haskell, the Pinkerton put two bullets through the man’s brisket, punching him to the floor, where he lay jerking as he died. The booms of a rifle sounded behind Haskell. He cast a glance over his left shoulder.
    Sonoma was down on one knee, firing around the doorframe toward the front of the hall, where men were yelling and more pistols were popping and rifles were cracking.
    â€œBetter hurry, lover, we got company!” the Yaqui cried, and she triggered another round.
    Haskell ran over to where he could see a pair of bare feet between the bottom of the drapes and the carpeted floor. To the left of the girl was a large, rumpled bed under a red velvet canopy. He pulled the drapes aside to reveal a slender blond girl dressed in nothing but a sheer cream-colored chemise, one strap hanging down her arm and revealing half of one small, pale breast. She knelt sideways to the wall, cowering under her arms.
    â€œMiss Johnson?” Haskell said above the crackling of gunfire in the hall.
    She jerked her head up, blue eyes sharp with hope. “Mr. Haskell?”
    â€œCall me Bear—everyone does. You got the message, I take it, Miss Johnson?”
    â€œYes, the old man told me. You’re here to rescue me from these”—she slid her gaze toward the rurale lying against the wall on the room’s far