Shotgun Charlie Read Online Free PDF

last man in line. “Tawley’s place, a month.”
    Dutchy nodded, loosed a stream of chaw juice, then tugged the brim of his hat once and followed the others. In near silence the four men rode out of camp, threading through the trees until they were out of sight.
    Pap watched them go, then turned to Charlie and clapped his horned old hands together, smiling. “What say we have ourselves a fry-up? I expect you’re ready to eat a bear and three cubs.”
    Charlie smiled and nodded, not wanting to disappoint the old man. But he wasn’t all that hungry. He knew he should be, hadn’t had much more than warm broth and a few nibbles of hardtack soaked in black tea since he came around. As Pap bustled about the cook fire, with effort Charlie ran a hand across the tight wraps of blue-and-red flannel the old man had swathed around his chest. “You did this for me?”
    â€œAin’t nobody else around I seen who was about to lend you a hand. And believe me, you needed it.” Pap went back to nudging strips of thick, fatty bacon around in his cast-iron fry pan. The scent reached Charlie’s nostrils and he felt a strange sensation, something familiar but almost forgotten to him. What was that?
    â€œI see your nose flexing like a dog on a stink trail. You’re hungry, boy. Hee-hee, I can tell. Any second now that gut of your’n will be growling like a angry lion.”
    Charlie looked down at his much-thinned belly, and his eyebrows rose as it began to make sounds he hadn’t heard in a long time. “I reckon you’re right.”
    â€œSee? Ol’ Pap knows. When it comes to vittles, Pap knows a thing or three!” The old man fairly danced around the fire ring like an Indian doing a war dance, sliding pans and clanking the coffeepot and howling because he blistered a finger.
    . . .
    â€œSay, Pap, what was that you said a few days back about skinning them gamblers, on the riverboat, I think it was?”
    They rode in silence for a few moments, and then Pap said. “Oh, you heard that, did you? I’d thought maybe you was still half out of your bean to recall that.” He looked at Charlie and smiled. “I talk a whole lot.”
    For another long stretch of moments, there was not much more said than that. Then Pap said, “I hope you won’t think badly of us, Charlie Chilton, but I will let you in on a secret. I ask you not to judge, if’n you can help it, though. We’re what you might call living as we can, taking advantage of situations as they arise, peeling a little bit for ourselves from wads where that little bit won’t much be missed.” He flicked a long, bony finger toward Charlie, his face drawn into a gray mask of seriousness. “Mind you, we ain’t no common garden-variety thieves.”
    â€œBut you are thieves?” Charlie’s sudden response surprised even himself.
    â€œWell, no. That is to say . . . not really. At least not so much like that. Here, how you like old Nub?”
    Charlie reached down, patted the neck of the big horse he was riding. “Oh, he’s a fine one, he is. I still feel odd about riding a beast, though.”
    â€œYou mean to say you never rode that old mule you buried back there?” Pap’s eyebrows rose high in disbelief.
    â€œNaw, fella like me ain’t got no call to go riding an old girl like Teacup. She was . . . well, she was my friend.”
    They rode in silence for a few minutes; then Pap said, “Charlie, you are without a doubt one of the kindest souls this old coyote has ever met. How come you to be so nice anyway? Most folks I know have a streak of rank running right through them a good foot wide.”
    â€œWell, I reckon I don’t know.” Charlie fidgeted, his big legs hanging down either side of the equally large horse as they plodded along the shaded roadway. They were following whatever course Pap had in mind, seemingly