.45-Caliber Deathtrap Read Online Free PDF Page B

shotgun’s boom. Smoke wafted as the hard case flew straight back, hitting the floor with an ear-ringing roar. The entire floor jumped and, farther down the hall, a glass chimney shattered as it fell from a bracket lamp.
    The girl screamed and bolted to the wall to Cuno’s right. She dropped to her butt, brought her knees to her chest, her hands to her face.
    â€œHe’s crazy!” she shrieked. “He’s just plumb crazy !”
    Cuno walked past her, stared down at the hard case. The man’s mouth was still open, flooded with blood from the bullet Cuno had fired between his open jaws. His eyes flickered at the ceiling before a gray veil closed down.
    â€œNot anymore he ain’t,” Cuno said.
    Hurried footsteps rose behind him. Cuno turned to see Lara running up the stairs, holding her skirts above her ankles. She flashed Cuno a worried look as she went to the whore in the hall.
    Cuno holstered his pistol, grabbed the naked hard case’s ankles, and pulled him down the stairs, the man’s bloody head bouncing with dull thuds.

4
    BLACKY GILMAN, OWNER and operator of Blacky’s Place in Spinoff Creek, twenty miles west of Columbine, looked around his dingy saloon, where four bearded men sat drinking and playing cards, and cursed. He rubbed his hands on his beer-spattered apron and walked out from behind his plank bar to the saloon’s back door.
    He poked his head out.
    â€œGoddamnit, Chinaman, get in here and put some food on. I’m gonna have miners in here in a half hour, and if they don’t get vittles from me, they’re gonna head on up the road and get ’em from Gault. God damn your lazy, yella hide!”
    Gilman cursed again, smoothed a stray lock of frizzy, colorless hair over his bald, bullet-shaped head, and let the door slap shut. His enormous gut bouncing and straining his leather galluses, he ambled back behind the bar and continued stocking his shelves with whiskey bottles from a wooden crate.
    He’d arranged two more bottles when the back door creaked open and a slightly built Chinaman in overlarge denim trousers and a gray wool shirt shuffled into the long, narrow room with an armload of stove wood. Rawhide galluses held his pants on his skinny hips. His thinning, black hair was combed straight back from his domed forehead, and a thin growth of beard hung from his chin, something between a goatee and a beard. His feet were clad in beaded Indian moccasins.
    â€œI must split wood, Mr. Geelman. The kid, he no split wood this morning. I must split for myself. That is why I slow with supper vittles. I hurry now, though.”
    The barman snorted caustically. “The kid took sick. So you have to split wood as well as cook. My heart bleeds for you.” Gilman turned his sweaty face to the Chinaman, who was piling wood in the box beside the big brick fireplace along the far wall. “Where’s your girl?”
    â€œShe clean fish—Li Mei. Clean fish for constable. You know how he like his trout for supper!”
    â€œForget the fish. Fetch her in here to start servin’ drinks. If she’s too slow again tonight, I’m gonna hang a price around her neck and let the boys take her into the back room for a little slap ’n’ tickle.”
    Several chuckles rang out from the table near the room’s front. The Chinaman, Kong Zhao, dropped a log in the wood box and turned his glance toward the bar, scowling at his boss’s back. He clenched his fists, then planted a hand on his right thigh, pushed himself to his feet, and shuffled over to the door.
    â€œI get her now, Boss,” he said in his practiced, kowtowing English, bobbing his head. “I get Li Mei right ’way!”
    He pushed the back door open, swung his gaze around the saloon’s small backyard to the diminutive Chinese girl cleaning fish at a low work bench. Gutted brook trout lay in a slimy pile to one side of the bench, glistening in the early