Quiet Town Read Online Free PDF Page B

and Doc haven’t held down a law badge I reckon. There’s a few small things you’d best learn and learn real fast. For the first week or so you’ll work with either me or Mark all the time. Now, these are the scriptures. First, never try to arrest a man unless you’re all set to draw and shoot, he might be wanted and on the run. If you go for a drunk watch him, he’ll come at you until his eyes focus best, then he’ll stop. You move in closer and you’ll throw him right off balance. If you arrest a man make him face a wall and lean against it with both hands on it. Then if he tries to move while you’re searching him kick his feet from under him. Don’t ever take your eyes off a man until you’ve searched him and don’t, no matter how friendly or harmless he looks, ever let him go out of your sight at all. Don’t let him reach his hand out of sight for a smoke or anything. If you’re going to a suspect in a buggy do it from behind, that way he can’t run you down. While you work for me you never abuse or mishandle a prisoner. If you go into court as a witness stick only to what you know for certain, tell the truth and don’t try either to help or fix the man. If there’s something you don’t know tell the Judge so. If you have to use your gun shoot to kill and keep on shooting as long as the other man’s on his feet or still holds his gun. As long as he’s still got the gun in his hand he’s dangerous, shoot him again.”
    Doc and Rusty looked at each other. Dusty Fog was far different new than he had been at the saloon. There he had been an amiable, friendly young cowhand. Here at the jail he was a hard lawman, speaking with authority. They stored his words up, each one knowing they would need all the help they could get if they were to be of any use to Dusty. Both were good with their guns yet they knew there was more to being a lawman than just being good with a gun.
    “All right,” Dusty let his words sink in then went on. “Mark, you, Rusty and Doc clean those guns after we’ve held a choosing match for the beds and got our gear stowed. Lon, you’re jailer for now, see the prisoner does the rest of the cleaning.”
    “What charge you holding him on?” Mark inquired.
    “Disturbing the peace should hold him,” Dusty answered. “I’ll fill in the jail log. Doc, Rusty, when you go to feed or collect a prisoner you go in twos. The man who goes into the cell gives the other his gun. Make any other prisoners back up away from you right back to the far end of the cell.”
    The gambler started to rattle on the cell bars with a tin cup and yell out. The Ysabel Kid opened the door and looked across the passage at the man. “Please, we’ns are playing poker and I can’t concentrate.”
    “You lemmee out of here!” the gambler yelled back. “You can’t do this to me!”
    “I got news for you,” the Kid replied, going to open the cell door. “We just now went and done it.”
    The man came out of his cell and into the office. Mark jerked his thumb to the desk and the broom. “Get to it.”
    The gambler opened his mouth to object then shut it again. He knew that he had made a mad mistake in thinking these young looking Texans were easy meat. So he cleaned the office out and then was pushed back into his cell with a cheerful warning he would be appearing before the Judge on the following morning.
    Doc Leroy sat at the table on the side of the room cleaning a shotgun. He watched the assured way Dusty, Mark and the Kid handled themselves. They knew this business as well as they knew cattlework.
    The door of the jail burst open and a man came in. “Marshal!” the man gasped to Dusty. “There’s trouble down at Bearcat Annie’s. Cy Bollinger, the blacksmith’s, causing a riot.”
    Dusty took up his hat and put it on. “Doc, Mark, let’s go.”
    The three young men went out of the door with the bringer of the news coming after them. He was a thin, narrow-faced man in town clothes and seemed