Powder Keg Read Online Free PDF Page A

anyway.”
    The “Mike” told me her feelings about the young bank robber.
    I stood up. “Thanks for your help.”
    “My pleasure.”
    I picked up my Stetson.
    Her nice brown eyes turned coy. “I still think you’re a reporter of some kind.”

Chapter 6
    T here should be a door to the past. I’d keep mine closed.
    “Well, I’ll be damned.”
    I didn’t need to turn around to see who it was. I knew who it was. I’d actually been looking for him but once he was there I wanted to go somewhere else. Fast.
    “You tried any of the pussy here yet, Ford? They’ve got some awful nice stuff.”
    Good old Harry Connelly.
    I was walking down one of the boardwalks. It was two in the afternoon and the streets were packed with shoppers on that snowbound but warm afternoon. Most of the shoppers were women. The ones around me looked with startled displeasure at Harry. They weren’t used to hearing language like Harry’s, especially not bellowed that way.
    He was the same Harry, dapper in Edwardian clothes, almost foppish the way his red scarf was thrown just-so across his full-length black winter coat. At the moment, he’d be carrying a variety ofweapons, including the Colt strapped to his hip and, if he ran true to form, at least two other handguns and a couple knives hidden about his person. And if he ran out of weapons, he could kill you with his hands. He was especially good at ripping eyeballs out with his thumbs.
    From down the main business street came the saloon sounds of laughter and player pianos. Later, a couple of the girls who pried whiskey money from the customers would take the stage and sing a couple of songs.
    I’d learned a few more things about the town since I’d left the library.
    Willow Bend was one of those modern Western towns. It understood that a part of commerce was sin. Thus, the town council allowed for three saloons, two just off the center of town and another down by the railroad roundhouse. It also allowed, with much greater discretion and disdain, a bawdyhouse just on the east end of the town limits.
    The girls had to come in once a month and get checked by one of the town docs and if there was any trouble at the house, the madam got fined, and usually pretty heavily. The girls were not allowed to spend time with any townsmen except within the confines of the house. And they were allowed into the business district only twice a week and only for two hours for each trip. A wag suggested that the town just paint all the whores bright red and be done with it.
    I’d also learned that the town had suddenly become the only place where people in that part of the Territory could find the things they needed. There’d been another town thirty miles away but it hadfolded when the railroad had bypassed it. By then the business was there and going to stay there.
    So Willow Bend was enjoying the fruits of another town’s disaster and things were moving along well. Connelly was probably right about the quality of the girls. They were a specialty of the town—as Harry had just loudly reminded the ladies now on the boardwalk.
    “I’ll bet I can tell you why you’re in town.”
    “You a mind reader now, Connelly?”
    “No. But it seems every time Pepper and I end up in the same place as Tom Daly, you have a habit of showing up, too.”
    “And just why are you here, Connelly? We both know you don’t care about some rich man’s banks being robbed, and I doubt you even knew who Jim Sloane was.”
    He gave me a hard look, but didn’t answer my question. “Last time, Ford,” he said, “you thought you were protecting Pepper and me from your friend. Who are you here to protect this time?”
    “Whichever of you needs it,” I said. “I don’t like to see anyone take the law into their own hands. That was one of the oaths I swore when I put on this badge. Same as you,” I added.
    He shook his head. “That friend of yours has already tried to kill us, and he’s still shooting his mouth off about us