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

“They worked for me before.”
    Wycoff was a stolid Pole with a heavy-featured, stupid-looking face. He had big, coarse hands and a hard jaw. He was heavy-shouldered and powerful. Art Boyle was a slender man with quick, prying eyes that seemed always to hold some secret, cynical amusement of their own.
    Neither man impressed Healy, but Barker assured him he need not worry. Getting teamsters for a northern trip in winter was difficult, and these were good men.
    Healy hesitated to ask questions, fearing to show his own ignorance, and equally afraid he would hear something that would make it impossible for him to delude himself any longer. Alder Gulch was the only way out.
    And why should Barker say it could be done if it was impossible? He knew the country and was willing to go. Nonetheless, a rankling doubt remained. He stared gloomily at the snow-covered window and listened to the rising wind.
    In the outer room there was boisterous laughter. He listened, feeling doubt uneasy within him. Only the quiet courage of the girl at his side gave him strength. For the first time he began to appreciate his helplessness here, so far from the familiar lights and sounds of cities. He had never seen a map of Wyoming. He had only the vaguest idea of the location of Alder Gulch. He was a fool—a simple-minded, utterly ridiculous…
    â€œI wish he was going with us.”
    He knew to whom she referred, and the same thought had occurred to him. “Barker doesn’t like him.”
    â€œI know. He’s a killer. Maybe an outlaw.”
    Wind whined under the eaves. Healy got to his feet and walked to the window. “He wouldn’t come, anyway.”
    â€œNo, I guess not. And trouble follows men like that.” Janice came to him. “Don’t worry, Tom. We’ll make it.”
    Williams appeared in the door, drying his hands on a bar towel. “Some of the boys…” he began. Then he stopped. “Well, we were wondering if you folks would put on a show. We’re all snowed in, like. The boys would pay. Take up a collection.”
    Healy hesitated. Why not? They could not leave before morning, anyway.
    â€œWe’d pay,” Williams insisted. “They suggested it.”
    â€œYou’ll have to clear one end of the room,” Healy said.
    He started for the door, glancing back at Janice. She was looking out the window, and looking past her, he could see a man crunching over the snow toward the barn. It was King Mabry.
    Tom Healy looked at Janice’s expression and then at Mabry. He had reached the barn and was opening the door, a big, powerful man who knew this country and who walked strongly down a way he chose. Healy felt a pang of jealousy.
    He pulled up short, considering that.
Him?
Jealous?
    With a curiously empty feeling in his stomach he stared at the glowing stove in the next room. He was in love.
    He was in love with Janice Ryan.

Chapter 4
    H E STOOD ALONE on the outer edge of the crowd that watched the show, a tall, straight man with just a little slope to his shoulders from riding the long trails.
    He wore no gun in sight, but his thumbs were hooked in his belt and Janice had the feeling that the butt of a gun was just behind his hand. It would always be there.
    The light from the coal-oil lamp on the wall touched his face, turning his cheeks into hollows of darkness and his eyes into shadows. He still wore his hat, shoved back from his face. He looked what he was, hard, tough…and lonely.
    The thought came unbidden. He would always know loneliness. The mark of it was on him.
    He was a man of violence. No sort of man she would ever have met at home…and no sort of man for her to know. Yet from her childhood she had heard of such men.
    Watching from behind the edge of the blanket curtain, Janice remembered stories heard when she was a little girl, stories told by half-admiring men of duels and gun battles; but they had never known such a man as this, who walked