Novel 1955 - Heller With A Gun (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF Page A

brutal, better get out. It’s nothing to what you’re liable to see between here and Alder Gulch.”
    â€œI didn’t say anything,” she said. “I didn’t say anything at all.”
    He got up abruptly, irritated with himself. He was no kid to be upset by the first pretty girl who came along. He had seen a lot of women, known a lot of them.
    But not like this one. Never like this one.
    He walked out and nobody said anything. At the bar he stopped, aware of the undercurrent of interest. Hat Creek Station had seen much rough, brutal action, but fists were not much used where guns were carried. It was something new to be considered in estimating the caliber of King Mabry.
    No place for a woman, Mabry told himself.

    B EHIND HIM THE momentary silence held. Then Tom Healy looked at Janice. “I’m a fool. You shouldn’t be out here. None of you should.”
    â€œBecause of that? That could happen anywhere.”
    â€œIt may be worse. That’s what he said.”
    She looked across the table, knowing what this trip meant to Healy, knowing there was nothing back East for him.
    â€œDo you want to quit, Tom? Is that it?”
    â€œYou know me better than that.”
    â€œAll right, then. We’ll go on.”
    â€œThere’s only trails. We may run short of supplies before we get through. And there’s Indians.”
    â€œFriendly Indians.”
    â€œYou’ve a choice. I haven’t. I failed back East. I’m bankrupt. The frontier’s my last chance.”
    She looked at him, her eyes grave and quiet. “It may be that for a lot of us, Tom.”
    His coffee was cold, so he took another cup and filled it. He had no idea why Janice was willing to go West with him. Maybe somewhere back along the line of days she had known her own failure. Nevertheless, what he had said was true. For him there was no turning back. He had to make it on the frontier or he was through.
    He had been finished when the letter from Jack Langrishe reached him, telling of the rich harvest to be reaped on the frontier in the cow and mining towns. Langrishe had a theatre in Deadwood, and there were other places. So Tom Healy put together his little troupe of five people and started West.
    He had not been good enough for New York and Philadelphia. He had not been good enough for London, either. Not to be at the top, and that was where he wanted to be.
    The Western trip began well. They made expenses in St. Louis and Kansas City. They showed a profit in Caldwell, Newton, and Ellsworth. In Dodge and Abilene they did better, but in Cheyenne they found the competition of a better troupe and barely broke even. And the other troupe was going on West.
    Then Healy heard about Alder Gulch. For ten years it had been a boom camp. Now it was tapering off. The big attractions missed it now, yet there was still money there, and they wanted entertainment.
    It was winter and the snow was two feet deep on the level, except where the fierce winds had blown the ground free. Alder Gulch was far away in Montana, but with luck and Barker to guide them, they could get through. Yet Mabry’s doubt worried him. He was a good judge of people, and Mabry was a man who should know. And he did not seem to be a man to waste breath on idle talk.
    Yet what else to do?
    The ground had been free of snow when they left Cheyenne, the weather mild for the time of year. Hat Creek Station had been the first stop on the northward trek. And they were snowed in.
    It was part of his profession to put up a front, and being an Irishman, he did it well. Actually, there was less than a thousand dollars of his own money in the ironbound box. There was that much more that belonged to the others, and—something that nobody knew but himself—there was also fifteen thousand dollars in gold that he was taking to Maguire in Butte to build a theatre.
    Secretly he admitted to himself that he headed a company of misfits. Janice was no