Blood on Mcallister Read Online Free PDF Page A

through his lashes.
    The match flame showed him a face.
    Harry Shultz.
    The man’s eyes were on him, watchful, fearful and mean at the same time. He raised the lucifer above his head, spotted the lamp and moved toward it. The match went out. Shultz swore and there came the faint sound of him searching for another. He found one and struck it, lit the lamp and straightway came to the side of the bed.
    His right hand slid away out of McAllister’s vision and a second later came into view again, this time with gleaming metal in his grip. A knife.
    The left hand came forward, touched McAllister’s pants’ pocket and came out with a bundle of notes in it.
    McAllister brought his clenched fist up and hit him in the side of the face with all his strength.
    Shultz fell across the bed, giving out a faint cry of alarm. McAllister drew back his leg to his chest and straightend it violently, kicking the man clear of the bed and across the room. He seemed to run backward with his legs going like a humming bird’s wings till he hit the wall so hard that the whole building shook.
    McAllister came off the bed fast, as near to sober as didn’t matter now.
    Crouched back against the wall, the squat and powerful Shultz gazed at McAllister out of shocked and wild eyes, the knife was held out point forward in front of his body. Helooked as if he could use it.
    McAllister reached back for his own knife and drew it. It was a bowie given to him by his old man, Chad McAllister, and the old man had given a few lessons along with it.
    McAllister said: ‘I’m goin’ to have your guts for galluses, Shultz.’
    The man’s thick lips drew back in a brief and rather horrible smile from yellow teeth. He took a pace forward and flicked his knife expertly from his right to his left hand.
    McAllister heard a faint sound behind him.
    He tried to move to the right so that he would have the two men on either side of him, but something hard struck him on the back of his head. He dropped to one knee and made an ineffectual swipe at Shultz with his knife as the man jumped in. Shultz evaded the blow and lunged forward with his own weapon. The expression on his face showed that he enjoyed doing it. The man behind McAllister struck again and this time the big man stretched out on the floor.
    â€˜Quick,’ Shultz said, ‘get the money and let’s get outa here. We don’t want to tangle with Deblon.’
    â€˜Is he dead?’
    â€˜He will be.’
    They moved fast, like shadows in the dim lamplight and within minutes they were out of the door, hurrying to the rear exit of the hotel as a man’s heavy steps sounded on the front stairs.
    McAllister groaned.
    A man said: ‘Mr. McAllister, are you all right?’
    McAllister snarled indistinctly: ‘Do I look all right to you?
    He opened his eyes and stared into the worried ones of the hotel proprietor.
    â€˜I sent for the marshal. Mr. Deblon’ll be here any minute,’ the man said. He looked like an anxious comic dog with his drooping mustache and question mark of a cowlick.
    The big man got to his feet, looked for a moment as if he would fall, but managed to stay on his feet and staggered to the bed. He sat on the edge and held his head.
    â€˜Christ,’ he said, ‘it feels like my skull was busted.’
    The proprietor quavered: ‘You’re blood all over, Mr. McAllister. Your face, your head, your front, just all over, Mr. McAllister. Oh, my Gosh, that this should happen in my place. I never had anything like this happen before. I’ve always run the most…’
    McAllister stared at him and looked terrible. He put a hand down to his rib cage and his fingers came away covered with blood.
    â€˜If you want to do somethin’ useful,’ he said, ‘git a clean shirt outa my saddlebag.’
    â€˜Sure, sure, anything you say.’
    The man bustled, glad to be able to busy himself.
    The door was flung open