American Gun Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

friendly, Mr. Grant. Don’t mind if I do.”
    Grant tossed a cigar across the desk; Miller sniffed it and put it in the breast pocket of his mackinaw. Grant pressed a button on the side of his desk; the stenographer came in again. “Get Dan’l Boone in here, youngster. Hank Boone.”
    She looked blank. “Who?”
    “Boone, Boone. Sawed-off waddy who’s always drunk. You’ll find him jawin’ around somewhere.”
    The girl went out, wiggling her hips; Grant stared after her appreciatively.
    He chewed his frayed cigar. “Ever play the rodeo circuit, Miller?”
    Miller’s shoulders shuddered. “No, sir! I been on the range all my life. Never did nothin’ fancy.”
    “Bulldog?”
    “Some. I used to be purty good in my young days, Mr. Grant.”
    Wild Bill grunted. “Can you ride?”
    The man flushed. “Listen here, Mr. Grant—”
    “No offense meant,” drawled Grant. “Well, we’re full up, Miller, an’ this ain’t no remuda; don’t need no cattlepunchers. …”
    Miller said slowly: “So you ain’t got a job fer me?”
    “Didn’t say that,” snapped Grant. “If yo’re Buck Horne’s friend, I’ll take you on. You can trail along with the posse aroun’ Buck t’night. Got any gear? Got yore hull?”
    “Nos’r. I—I hocked most ev’rything in Tucson.”
    “Uh-huh.” Grant squinted at his crumbling cigar; the door opened and a weazened little cowboy rolled in, his bowlegs wobbly and his bandana knot set at a rakish angle. “Oh, Dan’l, you loco son of a cross-eyed maverick! Come on in here.”
    The little cowboy was very drunk. He cocked his Stetson forward and lurched to the desk. “Wil’ Bill—Wil’ Bill, I’m here at yore command. …What the hell you want, Bill?”
    “Yo’re tanked again, Dan’l.” Grant fixed him with a disapproving eye. “Dan’l, this is Benjy Miller—friend o’ Buck’s. Joinin’ the outfit. Show him the ropes—the stable, where he bunks, the arena. …”
    Boone’s bleared eyes took in the shabby visitor. “Friend o’ Buck’s? Pleased t’meet ya, Miller! Shome—some outfit we got here, feller. We—”
    They passed out of Grant’s office. Grant grunted and, after a moment, put Buck Horne’s note in one of his pockets.
    As they tramped down a long runway leading to the heart of the Colosseum, Boone tottering along, the man Miller said: “How come he calls you Dan’l? Thought I heard ’m say Hank to the girl.”
    Boone guffawed. “Shmart—smart filly, ain’t she? Fresher’n new fodder! Well, I’ll tell ya, Miller. I wash—was born Hank, but the ole man, he says: ‘Maw, you kin call ’im Hank after yore mother’s secon’ husband’s brother, but by hell! I’m callin’ him Dan’l after the best damn Boone that ever drawed a bead on a red Injun!’ An’ Dan’l I been ever since. Haw, haw!”
    “You sound like you come from the Northwest some’eres.”
    The little cowboy nodded gravely. “Do I? Fact ish—is, my paw he punched cows in Wyoming. Ole Sam Hooker, he used to say: ‘Dan’l,’ he says, ‘don’t you never disgrace the fair name of yore native state,’ he says, ‘or me an’ yore paw we’ll come a-ha’ntin’ ya.’ I been trailed by ghoshts—ghosts ever since. …Well, Miller ole hoss, here we are. Some range, hey?”
    It was a huge amphitheatre, illuminated by thousands of harshly shedding bulbs. Its twenty thousand seats, arranged in an oval, were unoccupied. The arena, a long ellipse, was almost three times as long as it was wide, separated from the amphitheatre proper by a concrete wall, on the inner side of which ran the track, a fifteen-foot runner of tanbark. Inside this oval track lay the core of the arena, a bare expanse. It was here that steers were roped from running horses, wild broncos were “busted” by expert horsemen, and other rodeo events were staged. At each end of the oval—on east and west—a huge doorway led to the backstage of the arena, in one of which Miller and Boone stood. Other