Blood on Mcallister Read Online Free PDF

and a man said: ‘What happened? Did somebody git hurt?’
    McAllister said coldly: ‘Somebody’ll git hurt if you don’t get the hell outa here and close the door when you do it.’
    The man closed the door and tramped away, his feelings suffering.
    McAllister got to his feet, picked up the jug of water on the stand, bent his head over the basin and emptied the jug over his head. Then he dried his hair on the towel and groaned a couple of times as he did it. It hurt like hell. His hair plastered to his forehead and tangled, he pulled off his shirt and took a look at his ribs. The left-hand side of the rib-cage was covered with blood that seeped from a wound that ran from the top of his belly to below his armpit. The ribs had saved his life.
    The proprietor came with the shirt and stopped in awe at the sight of the wound. He looked like he’d faint, but his eyes switched to the other marks on McAllister’s body. There was a puckered old bullet wound on the left shoulder, a deep and recent knife wound down the chest and the mark of a terrible burn. He wasn’t to know that the man in front of him had been tortured by the Cheyenne during the winter.
    Frank Deblon tramped into the room. He was as sober as McAllister by now and that was saying something. He took one look at his friend and reached a flat flask of whiskey from a hip pocket.
    â€˜You’ll need this,’ he said.
    McAllister smiled.
    â€˜A friend indeed,’ he said. He drank well and handed the bottle back. Frank drank. He took a sideways look at the hotel man and shoved the bottle at him saying: ‘You look as if you need this more’n we do, friend.’ The man accepted it gratefully.
    McAllister took the towel, twisted it into a tight roll and laid it along the fresh knife wound.
    â€˜I’ll lie down,’ he said, ‘till the bleedin’ stops.’ ‘You’ll have a doctor,’ Frank said.
    â€˜Hell, no. No call——’
    â€˜You’ll have a doctor an’ like it. Christ, he’ll need a coupla yards of gut to sew that lot up. Charlie, go fetch the doc an’ if he ain’t sober, throw him in the horse-trough.’
    The proprietor high-tailed out of there faster than a jack-rabbit.
    Frank said: ‘You see who did this, Rem?’
    McAllister looked him straight in the eye and said: ‘Never saw him before in my life, Frank.’
    Ten minutes later, the doctor hurried in with his little black bag. He was almost sober. His hands shook like the leaves of an aspen.
    McAllister gazed at them, fascinated.
    â€˜You call yourself a friend,’ he said to Deblon, ‘an’ you’d let him near me with a needle? Why, I wouldn’t let him sew up a cowhide.’
    â€˜Let me tell you,’ the doctor said indignantly.
    â€˜Get on with it, doc,’ Frank said. ‘Don’t pay no heed. It’s just a way he has.’
    â€˜I think I’m going to faint,’ the hotel man said.
    â€˜Do it outside,’ Frank told him and wheeled him out of the door.
    â€˜I smell whiskey,’ the doctor said. ‘Give me a finger. It’ll steady my hands.’

Four
    Clanton lay ahead, the canelo hit an easy pace and McAllister moved to its motion. His side was as stiff as a Bostonian’s neck, but he felt pretty good. He thought about Billy Gage and his manager, Harry Shultz, and he wondered if Gage had been the man behind him during the attack in his room. He’d rather not believe that, because he had liked the man, but he knew it was possible. It was the kind of thing life produced to bewilder a man. Well, Clanton lay ahead and he might find out there.
    When he was a day out of Abbotsville, going along gently enjoying the spring, he came on cattle and started to idly note their brands. Most of them were marked with a Double B and seemed to be eastern barnyard stock crossed lightly with Texas longhorn. They carried more beef than the