Deadly Shoals Read Online Free PDF

thickly clothed in drooping willow trees. The town was laid out like a chessboard on an embayment, sloping all the way up to the buttress of the cliff. The space was so limited that some of the rearmost houses were hunched as tightly into the sandstone as if they had been hewn out of the rock. Various small craft lay on the surface of the water, the current tugging at their anchors.
    A palisade curved around the western fringe of the village and climbed up the long slope to the clifftop, where a walled fort with a single tall tower bulked against the sky. Wiki pointed to it and said, “Is that the barracks?”
    â€œAye. About two hundred ex-felons what call themselves soldiers live there.”
    â€œWhat about the governor?”
    â€œHe has quarters there, too, along with his staff.”
    â€œWe really should go up and report.”
    â€œWhat the hell for? Can’t you see it’s just the start of siesta? We won’t raise a living soul for hours.” Without troubling to argue further, Stackpole set his horse into a canter, clattering up a flight of shallow stone steps into the heart of the town.
    Wiki followed, heading up an alley that was lined with single-storied, flat-roofed buildings. Made of whitewashed adobe, they stood out sharply against the reddish sandstone cliffs and the bright blue sky, throwing short black shadows onto the baked mud street. Beyond, the streets intersected each other in squares, trapping heat and light. In many ways, Wiki thought, El Carmen looked like paintings he had seen of towns in the Arabian desert. The church had a tower like a minaret, and a domed roof like a mosque, and there was a plaza with a well. Even the horses, with their arched necks and sloping shoulders, looked Arabian. Every building had a hitching rail outside, where at least one pony stamped and whisked its tail at the flies. An abundance of yellow dogs slunk about, too, but the human populace was invisible, though a smell of burning charcoal and cooking food pervaded the warm, still air.
    Stackpole drew to a halt outside a rectangular building that stood out from the rest because it was made of red brick instead of adobe. Iron gratings over the windows indicated that this was a trading post, with goods inside that thieves might consider worth stealing, and a small, weathered sign confirmed that this was Adams’s store. The door was wide open. Wiki tied his horse to the rail, and walked across the echoing boards of the verandah to follow Stackpole inside.
    The dim interior was shaped like an inverted L , being a lot wider at the back than at the front. The narrow leg of the L was the place where sales were made, being furnished with a counter. Opposite this was a door bearing a notice attesting in Spanish that it led to a surgery, which Wiki judged must be quite a large room. Beyond, the wide back part of the store was used both for storage and for receiving and discharging goods, because a double door, shut and stoutly bolted and barred, was set into the wall of the farthest left-hand end.
    Right now, though, this area was a yawning, empty space. Where bags and barrels had been recently stacked, there were only outlines in the dust on the floor, surrounded by the scuffles of many feet. All that remained was a smell of tobacco, dusty corn, old brine, and vinegar. Shelves hung on the wall between the dispensary door and the front entrance, but, save for a few boxes of figs and sardines, a couple of square bottles of gin, and a cask of aguardiente, these were equally bare.
    Puzzled, Wiki said to Stackpole, “The provisions have all gone.”
    â€œI gave Adams instructions to supply the schooner, didn’t I?” the whaling master growled. “Obviously, the string-shanked bastard did just that before he run off with the vessel and my money.”
    The long, broad counter did carry a few goods, but nothing more substantial than a few red-striped shirts, a small pile of wool ponchos,