Bounty on a Baron Read Online Free PDF

able to find you?”
    “Right here, after about an hour.”
    “Where you gonna be for that hour?”
    “Getting some dinner. Know a good place?”
    “There’s a café down the street. It ain’t the best food in the country, but it’ll do.”
    “Thanks. I’ll be back here in an hour.”
    The bartender shrugged, as if he didn’t care one way or the other.
    Before going to the café Decker stopped in at the sheriff’s office.
    The man seated behind the desk looked up.
    “Can I help you?” he asked.
    “My name’s Decker,” the bounty hunter said, moving toward the desk. “Just wanted to check in with you. I just arrived in town.”
    The lawman stood, showing himself to be a tall man of medium build, not thin, not heavy.
    “Why would you be checking in with me?”
    “Isn’t that what a stranger does when he comes to town?”
    The man laughed, showing yellowed teeth.
    “Not in my experience.”
    “Well, I’m a bounty hunter on the trail of a man.”
    The lawman frowned and said, “That’s different. I’m obliged that you came here and introduced yourself.” He stuck out his hand. “My name’s Calder, Sheriff Sam Calder.”
    Decker paused only slightly before taking the man’s hand and shaking it.
    Finding Calder had been easier than he’d thought.

Chapter Six
    Over dinner, Decker considered his options.
    He had left the sheriff’s office without approaching the man about the Baron. For one thing, he didn’t know if the lawman was the right Calder. For another, he’d already made contact at the saloon and was probably better off going through the proper channels. If the sheriff was the right Calder, let him approach Decker.
    At the café Decker ordered a steak with potatoes and onions, some biscuits, and a pot of coffee. The bartender had been right. The food wasn’t the best, but it was edible and better than the beef jerky and beans he’d been eating on the trail. As for the coffee, Decker rarely found better coffee than he prepared for himself over a fire.
    After dinner he went back to the saloon and ordered a beer from the bartender. From the big man’s demeanor, no one would have known that Decker had already been in the saloon once. Decker did not speak up. If that was the way the man wanted to play it, that was fine with him.
    The saloon was fairly full now. Two private poker games were going on at opposite ends of the room and a couple of saloon girls were working the room, both looking more suited to their occupation than Viola had back in El Segundo. These women were older and knew how to work a crowd of men, not playing favorites but making each of the men feel special.
    Decker took his beer over to one of the poker games to watch. Ten minutes later, when a chair opened up, he slid into it.
    “You gents mind some new blood?”
    “Not as long as you got some new money to go with it,” one of them said, laughing at his own joke. The other three men at the table did not last. The joking man was apparently the big winner. He had a very red face, which Decker at first suspected came from laughing. He soon discovered that the man’s face was naturally that color.
    The deal fell to Decker and he dealt out a hand of five-card stud. He’d dealt himself a small straight, but the red-faced man was betting two pair like they were invincible. The other three men dropped out of the hand, and Decker decided to let the big winner have it. He didn’t like it when a new man sat in on a game, drew the deal and immediately made a winning hand. Anybody losing would look at that suspiciously.
    Two rounds later he drew a third king to a pair in a hand of draw poker and beat the red-faced man’s three threes without tipping his hand.
    “Looks like we’ve got us a player,” the red-faced man said.
    “Somebody ought to start beating you,” one of the other players mumbled.
    Fortune eventually turned for one of the other men, who started winning big. Decker, too, won a few hands and was ahead. Red